Euhemerus

This article discusses the following issues: the true title of Ennius’ work known as Euhemerus Sacra historia, the potential meaning of this title and of the title of Euhemerus’ work Ἱερὰ ἀναγραφή, the relationship between the Greek title and his Latin translation by Ennius, the structure and the interpretation of a fragment from Euhemerus (54 W. = Var. 64-82 V.2) of particular relevance for establishing the Ennian title, the meaning of a much-disputed phrase in that fragment (sacra scriptio), the text of a passage from Lactantius’ Epitome (13, 3), the relationship between the Ennian titles Sacra historia and Annales.

Summary:

Around the year 300 B. C. the Greek author Hecataeus of Abdera wrote a record about the legendary people of the Hyperboreans in the far north of Europe. This record is only in fragments available and conained a detailed description of this nation and the island where they lived, and also of its religious ideas. This work of Hecataeus is handled by modern researchers as a literary product of fantasy with utopian tendency. Of course there are imaginative traces in this document, but some things could also be recognized as very realistic. In this paper it shall be shown that Hecataeus had indeed written about the mythical people of the Hyperboreans, but under that name, however, he understood a people which actually existed for him. He reported very accurate about the culture of the island Celts of Southern Britain, but he did not call them "Celts". His work is obviously a fictional travel novel in which Hecataeus wanted to teach his readers, but there are in this travel novel descriptions of the culture of a real people in a mythological guise.

The cult of the past is a very common topos not only in the humanistic Quattrocento but also in the Middle
Ages, and it represents a strong propaganda tool in profane art associated with astronomical and moralistic
allegories, frequent in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This essay investigates some profane
themes - linked with contemporary literature - in court art between the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance.
In particular, it deals with secular cycles of Illustrious Men and Triumphs, following continuity and
transformations from older evidence (often lost) to their presence in proto-humanistic contexts in Italy before
the Quattrocento, when these typical themes are documented everywhere. Furthermore, it discusses
the relationships between images, words and memory; and the propagation of Illustrious Genealogies in
the late Trecento.

Scholars tend to situate Euhemerus' Sacred History in the context of ruler cult. Thus, many scholars think the SH was written to somehow provide arguments or support for the cult of living rulers, although it is seldom exactly argued how this is supposed to have worked. The article argues that the aim of the SH was to explain why traditional religion presented the gods in anthropomorphic shape.

Questo articolo si propone di dimostrare che le citazioni di Lattanzio dall’Euhemerus di Ennio sono una delle prove più eloquenti che possono confutare la tesi vulgata secondo la quale la letteratura latina arcaica andò completamente perduta già alla fine II secolo d.C.

The aim of this paper is to argue that Lactantius’ quotations from Ennius’ Euhemerus are among the strongest evidences that can refute the common view that archaic Latin literature was completely lost toward the end of the 2nd c. CE.

Euhemerus, the famous theorist on the nature of the gods who lived around 300 BC, has usually been discussed as a disembodied intellectual figure, with scholars focusing on his literary and philosophical sources and influence. Although he is called ““Euhemerus of Messene,”” there is uncertainty as to where he was born, lived, and worked, in particular whether he came from Sicilian or Peloponnesian Messene. Until now, the conquests of Alexander the Great and the establishment of the Successor Kingdoms have been considered the only context for Euhemerus. This paper will draw upon literary, historical, and archaeological evidence to argue that Euhemerus belongs in a Sicilian context. The long history of the worship of rulers in Sicily from the oikistai to the tyrants of Syracuse, the wealth of Sicily, the proximity of the Lipari Islands, the multiethnic milieu of Sicily with its vigorous interaction and syncretism, all contributed to Euhemerus' experiences and thought. We suggest t...

In div. inst. 1,13,8, Varro is said by Lactantius to have been one of many authors who have claimed that Saturn had once been a human being and a king of Latium. Agahd argued in 1898 that this cannot be right since it is safely attested through Augustine’s Civitas dei that Varro included Saturn among the primary gods as the seminal force of the cosmos. As I show in the article, there is much more information about Varro’s view of Saturn to find in the Civitas dei, especially from Augustine’s personal comments on the passages he quotes from Varro. Lactantius for his part took the list of authors in 1,13,8 from his predecessors Tertullianus and Minucius but added Varro himself without support in any Varronian text but taking for granted that the story of Saturn king in Latium after having escaped Jupiter—in reality an invention by Vergil—was an old and well attested tradition.

This paper argues that when Ovid sets the story of Myrrha in Metamorphoses 10 on the mythical island of Panchaia, he alludes to the description of a temple to Zeus on that island as described by Diodorus Siculus, which in turn links Panchaia to Ovid's description of the grove of Orpheus, humorously contradicting Orpheus' description of Panchaia as far away.

The dominant trend among the various manuals and treatises of European Utopian Literature and Thought so far is the assumption that there is a break of two thousand years between Plato’s Republic and Thomas More’s Utopia, a gap in political idealism, planning and vision, overshadowed by the Christian eschatological concept of the New Jerusalem. The Utopian establishments of the (Montanist) New Jerusalem, the Platonopolis as well as the Theopolis link the utopian thought of Classical Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages and they are still defying the narrow approach of modern scholarship on the History of (pre-modern) Utopian societies. Of course their evolution wasn’t linear since they were influenced by different Cosmo theories and systems of belief but they were always stubbornly present in times of Crisis and Transition, indicating the potential alternative that was remaining latent in Late Antiquity Thought long after Plato and way before Thomas More.

Roman culture apparently did not produce utopian literature in the strict sense. Even in the political and moral crisis of the period of civil wars, authors like Livy primarily focused on the Roman past to redress the catastrophic present. But around 40 B.C. Vergil and Horace can be seen adapting Greek utopian motifs to reflect upon the plight of the Roman people and their imminent future. Whereas Horace seems to look for a cognitive “Isle of the Blessed” in sharp contrast to actual Roman politics, Vergil innovatively sketches a renewed Golden Age to take place precisely in Italy. But unlike Greek utopian writers he does not claim to offer a structural alternative to the present state of affairs. In the Aeneid, Augustus is said to bring back an implicitly utopian reign of justice and peace. This is not a simple piece of propaganda, but a sophisticated yardstick to assess the new political system that came to life by brute force and uncanny mastery of Roman politics.